You’ve hired a painter for your Canary Wharf maisonette. They’ve assessed the ground floor. Looked good. Checked the upper floor. Looked good. Declared the whole thing “straightforward, two floors, should take three days.” Quoted accordingly.
Day one they paint the ground floor living area. Beautiful. Fresh, clean, exactly what you wanted. You’re genuinely pleased.
Day two they move upstairs. Different light up here. Completely different, actually, because the upper floor faces a different direction and the windows are smaller. The same colour you chose for downstairs now looks noticeably different up here. Not dramatically wrong. Just subtly off. Enough that when you stand at the bottom of your internal staircase looking up, the two floors don’t quite feel like they belong together.
Then there’s the staircase itself. Your painter has painted it a third colour because “it needed something different to break it up.” Nobody discussed this with you. They just decided. The staircase now looks like it connects two different flats rather than flowing naturally between floors of your own home.
And the landing. The tiny bit of wall visible at the top of the staircase where both floors meet. Your painter ran out of steam by day three and just slapped one coat on it. It’s the first thing you see walking up the stairs every single day and it looks rushed.
Welcome to the expensive reality of hiring painters who don’t understand maisonettes. These aren’t just two floors stacked on top of each other. They’re connected spaces where design decisions on one level directly affect how the other level feels.
I’ve spent ten years painting maisonettes across Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs, and the number of painters who treat them like two separate flats rather than one connected home is genuinely frustrating.
Why Maisonettes Need Different Thinking
A maisonette isn’t a house. It isn’t a flat. It’s something uniquely in between, and that in between status creates painting challenges that neither house painters nor flat painters fully understand.
The vertical connection changes everything. Houses have floors connected by staircases that feel natural because the whole building is one family’s space. Flats have no vertical connection at all. Maisonettes sit right in the middle, a staircase connecting two levels within a larger building. This staircase becomes the visual and emotional spine of your home.
How you paint around, through, and along that staircase determines whether your maisonette feels like one cohesive space or two disconnected floors that happen to share a stairwell.
Light behaves completely differently between floors. Ground floor maisonettes receive indirect light filtered through building surroundings. Upper floors often get direct sunlight. The same colour genuinely looks different on each floor because the lighting conditions are fundamentally different.
Painters who apply identical treatment to both floors without considering this light difference produce results that look inconsistent despite using the same paint. Maisonette specialists understand this and plan accordingly.
The staircase is the hardest bit. Painting a staircase in a maisonette within a managed building is genuinely tricky. Limited access. Awkward angles. The walls alongside stairs are at angles that make cutting in difficult. The ceiling above the stairwell is often at an unusual height. And everyone in the maisonette uses this staircase constantly, so it needs to look perfect permanently.
House painters tackle staircases regularly but in houses with full access and space. Flat painters rarely encounter internal staircases at all. Maisonette staircases are their own specific challenge.
The building management layer still applies. Unlike houses, maisonettes exist within managed buildings. All the E14 building management requirements, CSCS cards, insurance documentation, access protocols, still apply. But you’re also dealing with internal staircase painting that shares walls with neighbour properties and corridors that are building common areas.
This hybrid requirement catches painters from both directions. House painters don’t expect building management involvement. Flat painters don’t expect internal staircases.
The Canary Wharf Maisonette Challenge
E14 maisonettes present specific complications that intensify the general challenges.
The shared stairwell situation. Some Canary Wharf maisonettes have internal staircases that run alongside building common areas. The wall on one side is yours. The wall on the other might be shared with a neighbour or might face a communal corridor. Painting your side without affecting theirs requires precision and awareness.
Specialist maisonette painters understand these boundaries instinctively. Generic painters sometimes don’t even realize shared walls exist until building management gets complaints.
The sound transmission factor. Maisonettes in managed buildings share walls with neighbours. Paint preparation, particularly sanding and filling, creates noise and vibration that affects neighbours. Planning work around building quiet hours while also managing two floors of painting creates scheduling complexity.
Experienced maisonette painters factor sound transmission into their working method. They know which activities create noise and plan accordingly.
The vertical escape route. In a maisonette, if the ground floor is uninhabitable during painting, you can retreat upstairs. If upstairs is being painted, you go down. This phased approach only works if the painter understands maisonette layout and plans work to always leave one floor functional.
Painters who don’t think about this create situations where both floors are simultaneously disrupted, leaving you with nowhere to live in your own home.
The design continuity expectation. Canary Wharf maisonettes are often in premium developments where residents expect sophisticated design continuity throughout their home. The colour journey from ground floor through staircase to upper floor should feel intentional and cohesive.
This requires design thinking alongside painting skill. Understanding how colours relate across vertical space, how light changes between floors, and how the staircase connects everything visually.
A Real Project: The Republic House Maisonette
Here’s a project that demonstrates exactly why maisonette painting needs specialist understanding.
Client owned a maisonette in Republic House, ground and first floor. Open plan living area downstairs with kitchen. Bedrooms and bathroom upstairs. Beautiful internal staircase with original exposed brick alongside it.
They hired a painter who did excellent work on standard Canary Wharf flats. Portfolio full of gorgeous single floor apartments. Clearly talented. But had never painted a maisonette before.
The colour planning went wrong immediately. The painter suggested the same colour throughout both floors for “consistency.” Tested it on both floors. Looked fine under artificial light during the evening viewing.
Moved in and experienced it in daylight. The ground floor colour looked warm and inviting. The exact same colour upstairs looked noticeably cooler because the upper floor windows faced north and received different quality light. Two floors, same paint, completely different appearance.
The staircase became a disaster. The painter had never painted an internal staircase in a managed building before. Didn’t realise the staircase wall on one side shared structure with a neighbour’s property. Started sanding aggressively, generating vibration and noise that immediately drew a complaint from next door.
Building management contacted the client about noise complaints. Work stopped while the situation was resolved. The painter had no idea this was an issue because in the houses they normally worked in, staircase walls were always entirely the homeowner’s property.
The exposed brick alongside the staircase was botched. Client wanted the brick sealed subtly to protect it while maintaining its industrial character. The painter had never sealed brick in a staircase context before. Applied too much sealer, which pooled in the mortar joints and created visible dark lines running the entire height of the staircase.
Stripping excess sealer from brick in a narrow stairwell without damaging the surrounding painted walls is extraordinarily difficult. We spent considerable time carefully removing the excess, resealing properly with appropriate technique, and restoring the brick to the subtle finish the client originally wanted.
The landing area was an afterthought. The small landing at the top of the stairs where both floors connect was painted last, rushed, with one coat. This landing is the transition point between floors, the first thing visible from both directions. It needed to be perfect precisely because it connects the two levels visually.
Our remediation approach: Recoloured the upper floor using a warmer variant of the ground floor colour that would read as the same family under the different light conditions. This creates visual continuity without the jarring difference identical colours produce under different lighting.
Properly restored the brick sealing in the staircase with appropriate technique for the confined space. Repainted the landing to the standard both floors deserved. Ensured the entire maisonette now felt like one connected, cohesive home rather than two separate floors.
The original painter wasn’t bad at their job. They were genuinely talented on standard flat surfaces. They simply had never considered how vertical connection, light variation between floors, shared walls in staircases, and the critical importance of transition spaces all interact in a maisonette.
What Maisonette Painting Actually Requires
Let me be specific about what specialist maisonette knowledge involves.
Vertical colour planning. Understanding how colours behave across different floors with different light conditions. Sometimes identical colours work. Often they don’t. Professional maisonette painters test colours on both floors under actual daylight conditions before committing to anything.
Standard painters apply the same colour everywhere and assume it’ll look the same. It won’t, and in a maisonette the difference is constantly visible every time you use the stairs.
Staircase specialist technique. Painting staircases in maisonettes requires understanding awkward angles, confined access, potential shared walls, and the fact that this space connects your entire home visually. Cut in lines must be perfect. Coverage must be even on angled walls. The ceiling treatment must work at the unusual heights staircases create.
House painters do staircases but with full access and space. Flat painters rarely encounter them. Maisonette staircases are genuinely their own challenge requiring specific experience.
Phased working that respects the layout. Always keeping one floor functional. Planning the sequence so ground floor is livable while upper floor is painted, then reversing. Understanding that the staircase connects both phases and must be managed carefully during transitions.
Generic painters work floor by floor without considering that both floors plus the connecting staircase form one living environment.
Shared wall awareness. Understanding which walls in a maisonette are shared with neighbours, which are building structure, and which are entirely the homeowner’s. Preparation activities on shared walls require different approach and consideration.
This awareness prevents neighbour complaints and building management incidents that standard painters simply don’t anticipate.
Transition space perfection. The landing, the staircase walls, the area where one floor becomes another. These transition spaces are seen constantly and must be perfect because they’re the visual connection between your two floors.
Painters who treat these as afterthoughts create the feeling that the maisonette doesn’t quite work as one space.
The Internal Staircase as Design Feature
Many Canary Wharf maisonettes have staircases that are genuinely attractive architectural features worth highlighting rather than simply painting over.
Exposed elements. Some maisonettes have exposed brick, visible structural elements, or architectural details alongside the staircase. These deserve the same careful treatment as any feature in the property, not a rushed coat of paint.
The colour journey. Walking up or down a staircase is a transition moment. The colours alongside the staircase can create a subtle journey that makes moving between floors feel intentional and designed. This requires thinking about colour as a sequence, not just individual walls.
The railing and banister. Often the most visible element when looking up or down the staircase. Needs appropriate paint type, proper preparation, and finish that withstands constant hand contact. Getting this right elevates the entire staircase visually.
What to Demand From Maisonette Painters
If you own a Canary Wharf maisonette, verify these specifics before hiring.
Actual maisonette experience. Not just flat experience or house experience. Specifically two storey flat experience with internal staircases. Ask them to explain their approach for managing colour consistency between floors.
Light testing on both floors. They should insist on testing colours under actual daylight conditions on both floors before committing. If they suggest the same colour will look the same upstairs and downstairs without testing, they don’t understand vertical light variation.
Shared wall awareness. Ask them to identify which walls might be shared before starting any preparation work. If they haven’t considered this, they risk neighbour complaints and building management issues.
Staircase specific planning. How they’ll handle the staircase, the landing, and the transition between floors should be explicitly discussed. These areas deserve as much attention as the main rooms.
Phased working plan. They should explain how they’ll keep one floor functional throughout the project. If their plan renders both floors unusable simultaneously, they haven’t thought about maisonette logistics.
Get Proper Maisonette Expertise
Maisonette painting requires understanding vertical colour relationships, staircase specialist technique, shared wall awareness within managed buildings, and the design continuity that makes two connected floors feel like one cohesive home.
We specialize in E14 maisonettes across Canary Wharf and Isle of Dogs. We understand how light changes between floors, how staircases connect spaces visually, and how to create colour continuity across vertical living without everything looking identical.
Call for quote now: 07507 226422 Email: hello@havenedge.co.uk Website: www.havenedge.co.uk